Shots - Health News

4:17 pm

Mon November 11, 2013

First Estimate On Insurance Sign-Ups Is Pretty Darned Small

Mario Ricart , an insurance agent with Sunshine Life and Health Advisors, talks with Naylie Villa about buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act on Nov. 5 in Miami.

Joe RaedleGetty Images

The Obama administration later this week will issue much anticipated enrollment numbers for the first month of the Affordable Care Act.

But Monday afternoon The Wall Street Journalreported that fewer than 50,000 people have signed up for health insurance in the federal health exchange the during October. Even with the administration's efforts to lowball expectations in recent days, that's a pretty small number. And the while the White House won't confirm it, it's not specifically denying it, either.

So judging by the last several weeks, that either means they still don't want to tell us, or they still don't know the actual number.

Here's a quick Q and A on what that 50,000 figure might mean.

So 50,000 people, give or take, signing up for health insurance through the federal health exchange. How many people were expected to sign up this first month?

Even Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned everyone that the numbers would be pretty small for this first month. And if these particular numbers aren't quite right, don't expect the actual numbers released later this week to be a whole lot different.

These numbers don't represent everyone who has signed up, do they?

That's right, these are just the folks who managed to get through the troubled federal exchange.

On Monday Avalere Health, a health policy think tank, released a study that found another 50,000 people have enrolled in private coverage through 12 of the state exchanges that have reported information so far. Note that the largest state exchange, California, hasn't reported any enrollment numbers yet, but it has logged 2.5 million visits to its website.

But these numbers are well short of what the program will need to be deemed a success, isn't that the case?

It's really hard to tell yet.

The Obama administration has been touting what turns out to be something of a questionable statistic from Massachusetts about a slow start to that program in 2006. (Massachusetts' health law is the program on which the Affordable Care Act is based). But the Avalere study points out that these first-month enrollment numbers are not that far off from the enrollments in the Medicare prescription drug law in the early days. And that program turned out just fine.